It seems increasingly likely that one of the “make or break” points in American higher education will be how well individual institutions craft their message. It’s a complex issue. There are many constituencies, all of whom carry an expectation about what makes a college or university special. These expectations are often at odds with one…
In the upcoming Nov/Dec issue of Academe (due out in the next few days), we’ve not one but two articles arguing against the business model in education. Treating colleges and corporations and students as customers makes no sense. We who teach know this. Unfortunately, the boards of trustees an upper administrators who set policy seem to have…
On Friday, five days of testimony concluded in the trial of San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s case against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), which last year denied accreditation to the City College of San Francisco, with nearly 80,000 students, effective July 1, 2014, a decision that is now on hold…
Many of our institutions are paying consultants very large sums to improve their “branding.” My own institution, Wright State University, has budgeted $2.3 million for this purpose. And I believe that that funding has been designated simply for a “branding” plan and not for conducting a actual “branding” campaign. So who knows what the price…
An “On the Issues” Post from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education [http://futureofhighered.org] _______________ In “I Used to be a Good Teacher,” Alice Umber contrasts her experiences teaching as a tenure-track professor and then as a contingent, “adjunct” faculty member. Her piece should be required reading for college students and parents, for administrators…
On October 25, the BBC reported that, according to the World Health Organization’s best estimates, there were over 10,000 Ebola cases in West Africa. At least 4,922 people had died from the disease, with all but 27 of those deaths occurring in three countries: Liberia, with 2,705 deaths; Sierra Leone, with 1,281 deaths; and Guinea,…
Hansen, Ron. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. New York: Knopf, 1983. After treating the history of the Dalton gang in his first novel, Desperadoes (1979), Hansen explored the final days in the life of America’s most famous outlaw, Jesse James. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert…
Guest blogger Nicholas H. Wolfinger (@NickWolfinger) is a professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. Academia doesn’t always do a good job of communicating its findings to the outside world. Far too often, interesting and important results never get farther than the pages of a scholarly journal, in all…
Marty, a man whose writing I very much admire and whom I hope to meet in person one day (I really wish his office was just down the hall from mine so we could go get coffee), wrote in his postscript addressing my post, which in turn had addressed a post on the Chronicle page…
The Princeton Review’s list of the 20 most LGBT-friendly colleges and universities in the U.S.: 1. Emerson College (Boston, Mass.) 2. Warren Wilson College (Asheville, N.C.) 3. New College of Florida (Sarasota, Fla.) 4. Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.) 5. University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, Wis.) 6. Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio) 7. Franklin W. Olin College of…